Jane makes a shocking discovery and looks to Rafael for answers; Rafael decides to put everything he and Jane have on hold; Petra is trying to secure a future with JR, but her past might jeopardize everything.posted by k8t (9 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

I'm impressed with the actor playing Michael seeming totally different.posted by k8t at 9:09 AM on March 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I missed the last part of season 4 but trusted the narrator to keep me right in the swing of things and that faith was, as always, amply rewarded.posted by rewil at 9:48 AM on March 28, 2019

I really really did not like the look Jason/Michael gave to Petra. I suspect that Rose retrained him to focus lustfully on Petra for her own amusement and that's just going to be all sorts of ghastliness.posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:21 PM on March 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Wow, "Jason" really is pretty different. Not sparky or adorable. Kinda sad and dull. I wonder if that's how we're going to resolve the inevitable love triangle issues: brain-zapped Jason and Jane just end up annuling(?)/divorcing due to incompatibility and Jane ends up with Rafael.

That long monologue of Jane's was a tour de force. Good job, Gina. I loved the whole "I'll just join a support group!" and "The law is kind of vague on this situation!" types of comments. As a former soap watcher, it actually kind of got my attention to think "uh yeah, even on a telenovela this does lead to some weirdness."

No Mateo in this episode, so I guess nobody figured out how to tell him.

Couldn't really care about Petra's situation when compared to Jane's in this one.posted by jenfullmoon at 10:15 AM on March 29, 2019

I was sad watching low-affect Jason, bc Brett Dier seems like such a goofy dude which came through so nicely in Michael.posted by gaspode at 10:59 AM on March 29, 2019

I hated this episode so much, wow. Jane's monologue was great, and I get they had to do SOMETHING to make him entirely innocent in disappearing for 4 years, but amnesia plots almost always suck (and this one was no exception) and all the Rose plots on this show suck, and the combination is a terrible one. I am so disappointed.

I was team Michael in the beginning, but now I am team ugh, no one, even though that is not ever going to happen in this show. I too assume she and Michael will get an annulment and she'll end up with Raf.posted by jeather at 8:20 PM on March 29, 2019

why did they bring him back

i get that they needed a twist to keep jane and raf apart but there were other ways to do that and this did not work at allposted by likeatoaster at 12:11 PM on August 14, 2019

Watching this on Netflix (yes, I have been bingewatching this for the past 4? 5? days) gave me the opportunity to catch a wonderful detail.

At the end of the season 4 finale, when Jane is going to Raf's apartment (I notice she never seems to have keys, despite living there part time), at the very beginning of the shot, she says "shoot!" and picks her phone up off the ground.

At the time, I read it like a slightly odd transition from the previous scene where JR dropped the gun. I'm *so* accustomed to the silly/punny scene transitions, it looked like another one of those.

But then here, in the season premier, there's a flashback to Jane finding out that Michael was dead, in which her phone fell out of her hand and clattered to the ground. So right there, a full 45 seconds before Jane lays eye on JasonMichael, the show is saying "he's alive!". Yeah, it's only 45 seconds, but they're a very emotional 45 seconds where I was so consumed with Jane's headspace that I couldn't possibly pick up what the phone drop meant.

So well done.

I also loved Jane's breakdown monologue. I loved that it felt so different and wrong for the series. Even before I fully caught on to the single take, I noticed the lighting felt very different than usual, so I wonder if that was for technical single-take reasons? consistent lighting throughout what would normally be multiple camera angles? I suppose a detriment about it is that once I realized it was a single take, I started paying more attention to the technical details than the content of what Jane was saying. Especially using a live cat in the middle of the scene.

On another site someone mentioned how unusual it is for Alba and Xo to let Jane go on so long without participating in the conversation, but I think it's a great way to illustrate what's going on in Jane's head. It's almost a fantasy sequence; her mental state is so loud and chaotic that nobody else can get through. Even if it isn't what happened, it's what Jane experienced.

Only 17 episodes left and I'm still ALL IN.posted by itesser at 2:59 PM on October 8, 2019